Opinion: Best of the P35 boards?

At first, I'd been sold on the EVGA 780i (which i still think is a pretty sweet looking board), but after hearing several bad reports, I'm not so sure anymore. The IP35's and P5K's, however, seem to have many glowing reviews, so I'm starting to lean more towards something like that.

First of all, this is what's going into it:

: E8400
: 4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800
: 8800GTS
: Tuniq Tower 120
: And powered with a Corsair 620HX

No DDR3, no SLI, no RAID necessary.

For a setup like this, what might be a good board with a decent feature set? I see the IP35-E going for $60 after rebate right now, but are some of the other boards, possibly with other features and more stability, worth a few extra bucks? What separates the IP35V from the IP35 Pro? The P5K-E vs the P5K Deluxe? I'm looking to stay ~$200, so I don't mind spending a few extra dollars on a board that's worth the money. I'll definitely be overclocking, just don't need some of the other fancy stuff.

Gigabyte P35-DS3L - $89.99 another good board for a good price. About the same as the IP35-E.

the p5k-e is a good board by asus
Rich

LilBuddy said:

Gigabyte P35-DS3L - $89.99 another good board for a good price. About the same as the IP35-E.

Click to expand...

Yep, I heart my IP35-E. Its allowed my E8400 to be 4.5GHz benchable in 3DMark06

DS3L is not recommended if your overclocking, lots of reported problems, not to mention poor chipset cooling.

Cheapest P35 board that I'd recommend is the IP35-E but stepping up to an Asus P5K or Gigabyte DS3R is a good idea.

I just built my 1st system, see signature.
The combination has been stellar. I want to recommend the GA-EP35-DS3R.
One qwirk, could be the same for ANY motherboard, read below.
I had trouble getting the GA-EP35-DS3R to hold an overclock but it was my fault. It would save & exit, and boot back to default BIOS settings.
It turns out it don't like to see my USB external HDD durring a BIOS clock save cycle. The same if I have a CF card sitting in my USB card reader. So pull off any USB peripherals when adjusting and your good.

After that it's like a dream. Once happy the USB devices are always attached and the BIOS holds under restarts.

Assembled, it posted 1st time. Took the chip set drivers and Vista x64 without a hitch.
So far, not one error, lockup, hang, NADA.

Clocked to 2.66MHz and stressed for 2 hours it topped in the 50's. One case fan and the CPU cooler.

I'm back to stock clock because I know not what I do...

Abit IP-35 Pro is best performance vs price...the IP35-E is great as well, if you want to go to 4.5 ghz and beyond on that E8400, the Pro is the one to get

The 780i is a great board and takes my E3110 to 4.5 stable, that said if you are not going for SLI then get a good P35 board

ip35-e for sure.